Princess Academy (3 page)

Frid squinted at Olana. “So, are you saying that we don’t have to go to the academy if we don’t want to?”

Olana clicked her tongue. “This is even worse than I expected. I may as well set up the academy in a barn.”

Frid’s expression became troubled, and she looked around, trying to fathom what she had done wrong.

“Please excuse our rudeness, Tutor Olana.” Katar stepped forward. Her curly hair was reddish like the clay beds beside the village stream. She was the tallest girl after Bena, and she held herself as though she were taller than any man and twice as tough.

“We must seem pretty rustic to you,” said Katar, “but we’re ready to enter the academy, learn the rules, and do our best.”

Some of the girls seemed none too eager, with backward glances and shifting feet, but Os had been clear. Most nodded or murmured in agreement.

Olana seemed doubtful but said, “Then let’s have no more nonsense and in you go.”

As soon as Olana was beyond earshot, Katar turned to glare at the girls. “And try not to act so ignorant,” she hissed.

Miri stared down as she entered the building, letting the tip of her boot slide across a floorstone—white as cream, with the palest streaks of rose. It seemed remarkable that with no one to tend it, the stone had held its luster for so many decades. The villagers had to clean and oil the wooden chapel doors regularly to keep them undamaged.

Olana led the girls through the cavernous house, warning them to stay silent. The walls and floor were bare, and Olana’s voice and the click of her boot heels echoed over Miri’s head and under her feet, making her feel surrounded.

“The building is too large for our needs,” said Olana, indicating that most of the dozen or more chambers would be left closed and unused so they would not need to be heated through the winter. The academy would confine itself to three main rooms.

They followed Olana into a long room that would serve as a bedchamber. Several rows of pallets lay on the floor. The far wall held one hearth for warmth and one window facing home. Miri mused that the girls on pallets farthest from the fire would be mighty cold.

“I have a separate bedchamber just down the corridor, and if I hear noises at night, I . . .” Olana paused, an expression of disgust crawling over her face. “What a stench! Do you people live with goats?”

They did, of course, live with goats. No one had the time to build a separate house for the goats, and having them indoors helped both the goats and the people keep warm in the winter.
Do I really stink?
Miri looked away and prayed no one would answer.

“Well, a few days here might air out the odor. One can hope.”

Next they visited the huge chamber in the center of the building that would serve as a dining hall. A large hearth with a carved linder headpiece was the only indication that the room might have been grand once. Now it was bare but for simple wood tables and benches.

“This is Knut, the academy’s all-work man,” said Olana.

A man stepped through the adjacent kitchen doorway and cast his gaze up and down as though unsure if he should meet their eyes. His hair was gray around his temples and in his beard, and he gripped a stirring spoon in his right hand in a way that reminded Miri of her pa with his mallet.

“He will be very busy,” said Olana, “as will you all, so don’t waste time addressing him.”

The introduction seemed brusque to Miri, so she smiled at Knut as they left, and he returned a flicker of a smile.

Olana led the girls back through the main corridor and into a large room with three glass windows and two hearths. Wood fires were a rare luxury in the village, and the smoke was fresh and inviting. Six rows of chairs with wooden boards secured to their arms filled up most of the space. At the head of the room, a shelf of leather-bound books hung over a table and chair.

Olana directed them to sit in rows according to their age. Miri took her seat on a row with Esa and the two other fourteen-year-olds, put her hands in her lap, and tried to appear attentive.

“I will begin with the rules,” said Olana. “There will be absolutely no talking out of turn. If you have a question, you will keep it to yourself until I ask for questions. Any nonsense, any mischief, any disobedience, will result in punishment.

“This teaching position was supposed to be an honor. I’ll have you know I left a post at the royal palace tutoring the prince’s own cousins to climb up here and baby-sit dusty goat girls, though I suppose you don’t even know what the royal palace is.”

Miri sat up straighter. She knew what the palace was—a very big house with a lot of rooms where the king lived.

“Well, deserved or not, you are now part of a historic undertaking. In the past two centuries, the princess academy has merely been a formality, with the noble girls of the chosen town gathering for a few days of society before the prince’s ball.

“Since Mount Eskel is merely a territory, not a province, of Danland, and you cannot boast of any noble families, the chief delegate believes the academy must be taken very seriously this generation. Never before have the priests named a territory the chosen region. I may tell you that the king and his ministers are quite uneasy about marrying the prince to an unpolished girl from an outlying territory. Therefore the king granted me the solemn responsibility to verify that every girl sent to the ball is fit to become the princess. If any of you fail to learn the basic lessons I teach you this year, you will not attend, you will not meet the prince, and you will return to your village disgraced.

“Now, I understand that there is a true Danlander among us, is that so?” Olana sighed at the silence that followed. “I’m requesting a response. If any of you were not born on this mountain, you have my permission to speak now.”

Most of the girls had turned to look at Britta sitting in the fifteen-year-olds’ row before she raised her hand.

“I was born in the city of Lonway, Tutor Olana.”

Olana smiled. “Yes, you do have a look in you of some breeding. Your name?”

“Britta.”

“Is that it? What’s your father name? I would expect the villagers to be ignorant of such a formality, but not one from Lonway.”

Miri adjusted in her seat. They were not ignorant—a girl took her father’s name and a boy took his mother’s name to help distinguish them from anyone else with the same first name. Mount Eskel shared some Danlandian traditions, it seemed.

“I’m orphaned this year, Tutor Olana,” said Britta.

“Well then,” said Olana, looking ill at ease at how to respond. “Well, such things happen. I’ll expect you to lead the class in your studies, of course.”

The stares pointed at Britta began to turn to glares.

“Yes, Tutor Olana.” Britta kept her eyes on her hands. Miri suspected that she was gloating.

Then began the instruction. Olana held up a shallow box filled with smooth yellow clay. With a short stick called a stylus, she marked three lines in the clay.

“Do any of you know what this is?”

Miri frowned. She knew it was a letter, that it had something to do with reading, but she did not know what it meant. Her embarrassment was appeased somewhat by the general silence that followed.

“Britta,” said Olana, “tell the class what this is.”

Miri waited for her to spout the brilliant answer and revel in her knowledge, but Britta hesitated, then shook her head.

“Surely you know, Britta, so say so now before I lose patience.”

“I’m sorry, Tutor Olana, but I don’t know.”

Olana frowned. “Well. Britta will not be an example to the class after all. I am curious to see who will jump forward to take her place.”

Katar sat up straighter.

While Olana explained the basics of reading, Miri’s thoughts kept flitting to Britta. One summer trading day, Miri had overheard Britta read words burned into the lid of a barrel. Was she pretending ignorance now so she could amaze Olana later with how quickly she would seem to learn?
Lowlanders are as clever as they are mean
, thought Miri.

Her attention snapped away from Britta when Gerti, the youngest girl, raised her hand and interrupted Olana’s lecture. “I don’t understand.”

“What was that?” said Olana.

Gerti swallowed, realizing that she had just broken the rule of speaking out of turn. She looked around the room as if for help.

“What was that?” Olana repeated, pulling her vowels long.

“I said, I just, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.”

“What is your name?”

“Gerti,” she breathed.

“Stand up, Gerti.”

Gerti left her chair slowly, as though longing to return to its safety.

“This little girl is giving me an opportunity to illustrate the consequences of rule breaking. Even the prince’s cousins are punished when they choose to misbehave, though I think I’ll employ slightly different methods for you. Follow me, Gerti.”

The tutor led Gerti out of the room. The rest of the girls sat motionless until Olana returned with two soldiers.

“Gerti is in a closet thinking about speaking out of turn. These fine soldiers will be staying with us this winter. Should any of you have ideas about questioning my authority, they are here to make it clear. Each week that you show a marked improvement, you are permitted to return home for the rest day, so let us continue our studies with no further interruptions.”

At sundown, the workmen on the roof stopped hammering and Miri first noticed the noise for its absence. Pa and Marda would be home by now, white dust wafting from their work clothes. Marda would say how she missed Miri, her conversation, maybe even her cabbage soup. What would Pa say?

In the dining hall, the girls ate fried herring stuffed with barley porridge, onions, and unfamiliar flavors. Miri suspected it was a fancy meal and meant to mark a special occasion, but the strange spices made it feel foreign and unkind, a reminder that they had been taken away from home.

No one spoke, and the sounds of sipping and chewing echoed on bare stone walls. Olana dined in her own room, but no one could be certain if she was listening and would emerge at the first sound, trailing soldiers in her wake.

Later in their bedchamber, the tension had wound so tight, it burst into a flurry of whispered conversations. Gerti reported on the closet and scratching sounds she had heard in the dark. Two of the younger girls cried for wanting to go home.

“I don’t think it’s fair the way Olana treats us,” Miri whispered to Esa and Frid.

“My ma would have a thing to say to her,” said Esa.

“Maybe we should go home,” said Miri. “If our parents knew, they might change their minds about making us stay.”

“Hush up that kind of talk, Miri,” said Katar. “If Olana overheard, she’d have the soldiers whip us all.”

The conversation lagged and then stopped, but Miri was too tired and anxious to sleep. She watched the night shadows shift and creep across the ceiling and listened to the low, rough breathing of the other girls. Her pulse clicked in her jaw, and she held on to that noise, tried to take comfort from it, as if the quarry and home were as near as her heart.

n

Chapter Four

n
Tell my family to go ahead and eat

To make it home I’d have to move my feet

But the mount’s made stone where my feet numbered two

And I’ve swallowed more dust than I can chew

n

T
he next day, the workers finished the repairs and left the academy, leaving Olana, Knut, two soldiers, and an unfamiliar silence. Miri missed the pounding and scraping and beating, sounds that meant work in the quarry was going on as usual and no one was injured. The quiet haunted her all week.

In the mornings before lessons started, the girls spent an hour doing chores, washing and sweeping, fetching wood and water, and helping Knut in the kitchen. Miri spied the other girls stealing minutes of conversation at the woodpile or behind the academy. Perhaps they did not mean to exclude her, she thought, perhaps they were simply used to one another from working together in the quarry. She found herself wishing desperately for Marda at her side, or Peder, who had somehow remained her friend, unchanged, over the years.

She glanced at Britta carrying a bucket of water to the kitchen and wondered for the first time if there was more to her silence than just pride. Then again, she was a lowlander.

Near the week’s end, the girls could barely follow their lessons, so rich was the anticipation of being able to sleep by their home fires and attend chapel, to see their families and report all they had suffered and learned.

“We can walk home tonight,” Esa whispered to Frid when Olana left the room for a moment. Then she turned to Miri, her expression full of happy anticipation. “I don’t care how late, so we’ll have all day tomorrow!”

Miri nodded, pleased to have been included.

When Olana continued the reading instruction, Miri noticed Gerti rubbing her forehead as if thinking gave her pain. No doubt the time she had spent in the closet their first day put her behind. She would need extra help if she was ever to catch up.

There was a village saying that Miri thought of more than any other: “The unfair thing stings like nettles on bare skin.” It was not fair that Olana had let Gerti lag behind and did nothing about it. Miri’s instinct prodded her to do something, so she went to Gerti and crouched by her desk, clinging to a wild hope that Olana would see the justice in her action and let her be.

“I’ll help you, Gerti,” said Miri quietly. She drew the first character on Gerti’s tablet. “Do you know what this is?”

“What is going on?” asked Olana.

“Gerti missed the first lesson,” said Miri. “She needs help.”

“Come here, both of you,” said Olana.

Gerti’s mouth dropped open, and she gripped the sides of her desk.

“Gerti didn’t do anything,” said Miri, standing.

She wished for words to defend herself, but Olana did not ask for an explanation. She picked up a whittled stick as long as her arm.

“Hold out your hand, Miri, palm up.”

Miri stuck out her hand and was dismayed to see it tremble. Olana lifted the stick.

“Wait,” said Miri, pulling her hand back. “I was helping. How can you hit me for helping?”

“You were speaking out of turn,” said Olana. “Continuing to do so won’t excuse you.”

“This isn’t fair,” said Miri.

“On the first day in class, I made clear that a broken rule would result in a punishment. If I don’t follow through on my word, that would be unfair. Hold out your hand.”

Miri could think of no response. She opened her fingers to expose her palm. Olana brought the stick down with a crack and a sting, and Miri’s arm shook with the effort of not pulling away. A second time, and a third. She looked at the ceiling and tried to pretend she had not felt a thing.

“And now, miss, we should deal with you,” said Olana, turning to the younger girl.

“Gerti didn’t ask for help.” Miri swallowed and tried to calm her quavering voice. “It was my fault.”

“So it was. Now you all have learned that those who speak out of turn choose punishment for themselves and anyone they speak to.”

“So if I speak to you, Tutor Olana, will you get the lashes?”

Miri had hoped to draw out a laugh and ease the friction, but the girls stayed as quiet as hunted prey. Olana’s lips twitched in anger.

“That will earn you three lashes on your left hand as well.”

Gerti took her three lashes and Miri hers again on the other hand. When the lesson continued, Miri found it difficult to grip her stylus. She kept her head down and focused on making each character just right in the clay. Sometimes she could hear Gerti’s breath catch in her throat.

“Olana.” A soldier entered the room. “Someone from the village has come.”

Olana followed him out, and Miri could hear her voice echo from the corridor. “What do you want?”

“The village sent me to ask when the girls are coming home,” came the voice of a boy.

Expectation crossed Esa’s face, and Bena and Liana whispered and giggled. Miri’s own insides felt buoyant and sick at once. Peder was just outside.

“You tell the village that everything is fine. I know the soldiers explained to their parents that I must have absolute freedom to teach and train the girls if I am to succeed. They will visit home when they earn it, and disrupting my class with questions will not bring them home any sooner.”

Olana came back and resumed her lecture. Through the window, Miri could see Peder standing in front of the academy, trying to see past the sun’s glare on the windows. He kicked the ground, picked up a piece of scrap linder larger than his fist, and ran back toward the village.

At noon when Olana dismissed them to the dining hall, Miri’s palms were still red. Her thoughts and emotions played a game of tug-rope inside her. That she should be punished for helping Gerti. That she should be ignored and humiliated. That Peder had come all this way and been dismissed, and she had not been able even to wave. And added to it the ever-present shame of being useless.

“This is stupid,” Miri said as soon as they had exited the classroom.

Katar, who walked beside her, said, “Hush,” and glanced back to see if Olana had heard.

“Let’s go home,” Miri said a little louder. Her gut still felt hollow since seeing Peder, and her stinging hands felt bigger than her caution. “We can leave before the soldiers even know we’re gone, and if we all run at once, they’ll never catch us.”

“Stop!” The commanding voice made Miri halt midstep. No one turned around. The click of Olana’s boot heels came closer.

“Was that Miri speaking?”

Miri did not answer. She thought if she spoke, she might cry. Then Katar nodded.

“Well,” said Olana, “another offense. I did say earlier that speaking out was punishable not only to the perpetrator, but to her listeners, isn’t that right?”

Some of the girls nodded. Katar glared.

“None of you will be returning to your families tomorrow,” said Olana. “You will spend the rest day in personal study.”

Miri felt as if she had been slapped. A cry of protest arose.

“Silence!” Olana raised her walking stick. “There is nothing to debate. It’s time you learned you are part of a country with laws and rules, and there are consequences for disobedience. Now back to the classroom. There will be no noon meal today.”

The girls made more noise than usual taking their seats, as if to give voice to their anger, scraping the wood chair legs against the stone floor, clattering their tablets on their desks. In the quiet that followed, Miri heard Frid’s stomach moan in hunger. Normally, Miri would have laughed. She pressed her stylus so hard into the clay that it snapped in two.

That afternoon, Olana let the girls go out for some exercise. They pulled on cloaks and hats, but once outside Miri took hers off. The instant cold felt fresh and freeing after all day in the fire-heated classroom. She longed to run like a rabbit, so light that she would leave no tracks to follow.

Then she noticed that she was standing alone and the others were in a group, facing her. The oldest girls stood in front, arms crossed. Miri thought she understood how a lost goat would feel on meeting a pack of wolves.

“It’s not my fault,” said Miri, afraid admitting that she was sorry would condone Olana’s actions. “Her rules are unfair.”

Frid and Esa glanced back to see if Olana was near, but it was understood that outside, the girls could talk.

“Don’t rush to apologize,” said Katar, flipping her orange hair out of the neck of her cloak.

Miri’s chin began to quiver, and she covered it with her hand and tried to act unaffected. If everyone thought her too weak to work in the quarry, at least she could show them she was too strong to cry.

“I was trying to stand up for all of us. This is another case of lowlanders treating mountain folk like worn-through boots.”

Bena glared. “You were warned, Miri. Why can’t you just follow the rules?”

“No one should have to follow unfair rules. We could all run home right now. We don’t have to stay and put up with closets and palm lashings and insults. Our parents should know what’s going on.” Miri wished that she could find the right words to express her anger and fear and longing, but to her own ears her argument sounded forced.

“Don’t you dare,” Katar said, folding her arms. “You do that and they might shut down the academy and ask the priests to announce some other place as the home of the future princess. Then we’ll all lose our chance because of you, Miri.”

Miri stared. No one was laughing. “You really think they’ll let one of us be a princess?” she asked, her voice dry and quiet.

“Of course, acting the way Miri does she’d never be chosen, but there’s no reason the rest of us can’t try.” Katar’s usually confident voice began to sound pinched and strained, as if, for some reason Miri could not guess, she was desperate to convince the others. “Being a princess would mean more than just marrying a prince—you’ll see the rest of the kingdom, live in a palace, fill your belly every meal, have a roaring fire all winter long. And you’ll do important things, the kinds of things that affect an entire kingdom.”

Be special, important, comfortable, happy.
That was what Katar was offering with her plea to stay. Some of the girls shuffled closer, leaned slightly toward Katar, as if feeling the pull of her story. Miri was embarrassed to feel chills sneak across her own skin. What would her pa think of her if she was chosen out of all the other girls to be a princess?

It was a lovely idea, a beautiful story, and for a moment she wished she could believe it, but she knew no lowlander would let a crown sit on a mountain girl’s head.

“It won’t happen . . . ,” Miri whispered.

“Oh, be quiet,” said Katar. “You’ve made us lose a meal and a return home. Don’t you dare spoil our chances of becoming a princess.”

Olana called, and all the girls, even Gerti, turned their backs on Miri and went inside. Miri stared at the ground, hoping no one would see how her face burned. She followed them in at the back of the line.

Britta walked just ahead of her in the corridor. Before they entered the classroom, the lowlander girl turned and smiled. Miri almost smiled back before she realized that Britta must be glorying in her disgrace. She frowned and looked away.

The next day was unbearable. Although Olana insisted returning to the village each rest day should be an occasional privilege, she also declared she must have a break from the girls unless she were to go mad. So the girls passed that day unsupervised in the classroom. Miri sat alone, aware that even as the noise of levity grew, she was not invited to take part. When a conversation fell on the topic of Olana, Miri offered what she thought was a remarkable imitation of the tutor’s pinched lips. No one laughed, and Miri resigned herself to practicing her letters in silence.

She spent the next week counting hours until rest day. Surely after all the girls could sleep by their own fires for a night, the tension would ease. Perhaps when Miri told her pa about the rules and the palm lashing, he would admit he had made a mistake, that he needed her home just as much as he needed Marda. Just three more days to freedom, then two, one.

Then that night, snow fell.

The school awoke to white drifts that rivaled the village’s strewn rock debris for covering everything and threatening to keep piling up to their windowsills. The girls were quiet as they looked outside, imagining the distance back to the village, the hidden holes and boulders they would not be able to see for the snowfall, weighing the danger against their desire to go home.

“To the classroom, then,” said Olana, ushering them away from their bedchamber window. “No one will be walking through this weather, and if the tale I hear of this mountain is correct, we’ll be huddling inside until spring thaw.”

Olana stood at the head of the class, her hands clasped behind her back. Miri felt herself sit up taller under that gaze.

“Katar has informed me that some doubt the legitimacy of this academy. I won’t risk having flabby-minded girls to present to His Highness next year, so let me assure you, the prince will choose one of you to marry, and you will live in the palace, be called ‘princess,’ and wear a crown.”